Alicia Zuckerman

Editorial Director

David Samayoa

Alicia began making radio as a 7-year-old in rural upstate New York using two cassette recorders and appropriated material from Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. Twenty years later, she began her real-world radio career as a reporter and producer for NPR’s On the Media.

Her reporting has aired on NPR, American Public Media, and Public Radio International, including The World, Studio 360 and This American Life. Alicia is the founding producer of WLRN’s award-winning weekly public affairs program, The Florida Roundup, as well as the co-creator of Under the Sun on WLRN, the award-winning series of feature stories, interviews, audio postcards, and original fiction.

Among the artists she has interviewed for WLRN are Michael Tilson Thomas, Dawn Upshaw, Mark Morris, Tom Wolfe and They Might Be Giants. Before coming to Miami, she covered arts, culture, and breaking news for WNYC in New York City, where she reported on Carnegie Hall, puppet opera, arts education, Hungarian strudel, strong cheese, two presidential elections, and nuclear power.

Ways to Connect

The Pritzker Architecture Prize is being awarded Friday at the New World Center on Miami Beach, a building designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, a past winner of the prize.

The Pritzker is considered the world's top award for architecture, and the annual prize usually recognizes a living architect. But this year's winner is the German architect Frei Otto, who died in March at age 89. He had been told he'd won the coveted prize.

This is first time the Pritzker Prize is taking place in Miami-Dade County.

Justin Peck is one of the country’s most sought-after ballet choreographers. Shepard Fairey is one of the most famous street artists in the world. Peck is resident choreographer with New York City Ballet and lives in New York. Fairey lives in L.A. Their first collaboration is happening in West Palm Beach.

Miami City Ballet performs the world premiere of "Heatscape" on Friday, March 27, before taking it to Miami and Fort Lauderdale in April. To hear how it all came together listen to the story above.

The composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison have been fusing their visions for upwards of 17 years. Some of their work together is included in a Bill Morrison retrospective up now at the MoMA in New York. Their first piece was for Bang on a Can, the new-music collective Gordon co-founded. It was called "City Walk," and over the years, a lot of their work has been about cities.

When Jane Chu was growing up in Arkansas, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she remembers that her parents liked bok choy while she liked corn dogs. They spoke Mandarin and "book English," and that, she says, could only go so far when her father died when she was nine-years-old. But she played piano, and she says music is where she found a way to express emotions where words fell short.

Chu believes strongly in the ability of the arts to transform individuals, communities and the overall economy.

Just after midnight on Tuesday morning, gay marriage became legal in Florida. But the first marriages started in Miami-Dade County about twelve hours earlier.

It was about 11:30 in the morning. Judge Sarah Zabel held a hearing and decided there was no need to wait. She lifted the stay on her ruling declaring Florida's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

And gay couples could start getting married right away.

Our reporter John O'Connor was at the courthouse. And we had people at courthouses in Monroe, Broward and Palm Beach counties, too.

As the year winds down, some of us find ourselves with some extra time off and maybe a little more time to read over the next few days. So we asked Miami Herald book editor Connie Ogle to tell us about some of her favorite books of 2014.

On Thursday night in Overtown, artist Doba Afolabi was showing his work at the Art Africa show.

Afolabi is from Nigeria. He used to live in Miami, but left for Brooklyn a while ago.

Up close, his paintings look like abstracts in brightly-colored oil paint. But stand a few feet back, and a cellist in a top hat emerges. Or two saxophone players against a fiery background. One painting is called “Ride the Storm.” That’s the piece he did after his house burned down. Painting, he says, is what keeps him happy and centered.

Copyright by Judy Blume and used only with her written permission. Not to be further reproduced or distributed except with her permission.

When I was in elementary school, I wrote an "autobiography" called "I Want to Be Like Judy." It had a pink construction paper cover and came in second in the school library contest. I never imagined that 30-something years later, Judy would say to me, "Let's take a selfie!" (See our virtual tour - link below.) I loved all her books, but "Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself" was one of my very favorites. I read it over and over. Ten times? Fifteen?

Alison Burgos and Michelle Gaber first started thinking about putting together a plant-based food festival a couple years ago. They were at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival's Burger Bash, and there wasn't anything Alison could eat.

The author of a new children's book about being transgender is speaking Thursday, Oct.9, at 7 p.m. at the Stonewall Gallery in Wilton Manors. Jessica Herthel wrote "I am Jazz" with Jazz Jennings (not her real last name; her family uses the pseudonym to protect her safety).

Got a bent for babka? A talent for tzimmes? A gift for gefilte fish? A capacity for kugel?

With the Jewish New Year starting next week, the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU in South Beach is collecting original recipes from cooks and bakers throughout South Florida. And not just collecting them -- judging them, in its "From My Family's Kitchen" recipe contest this Sunday, Sept. 21.

At 86, Dr. Ruth Westheimer proudly announces that she goes out every night. Maybe that explains why so many people seem to have a story about meeting the gregarious sex therapist. This one met her on a cruise. That one met her dancing the hora in a New York City synagogue. I met her waiting in line at the bathroom of Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side. She lives in Manhattan but travels the country and the world (this summer she's headed to Israel and South Africa) having no-nonsense conversations about sex.

(Note: Mark Hedden's wife is on the board of the Key West Literary Seminar.)

David Kaufelt died Saturday at home in Key West.

He and his wife Lynn arrived from New York four decades ago. David was a writer and wanted to be surrounded by more writers. Several others already made the island their home, but Kaufelt had an idea to make Key West into a true literary destination, not just for people interested in the legacies of Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, but for living, breathing writers too.